Pollution

"Below the center of Butte flows water tainted with poisons drawn from a mass of mining and smelting waste that has been a pollution problem for more than a century."

"A train derailment in rural eastern Montana spilled 35,000 gallons (132,489 liters) of crude oil and forced the evacuation of about 30 people, a U.S. official said on Friday in an email to state officials."

"Mercury levels in bluefish caught off the U.S. Atlantic coast dropped more than 40 percent over the past four decades thanks to federal restrictions on coal emissions, according to a new study."

"One of the largest leaks in Alberta history has spilled about five million litres of emulsion from a Nexen Energy pipeline at the company's Long Lake oilsands facility south of Fort McMurray."

"The Interior Department on Thursday proposed a new rule aimed at protecting streams from the high level of pollution caused by a technique known as mountaintop removal mining."

"The National Park Service thought it had a good strategy for reining in the discarded water bottles that clog the trash cans and waste stream of the national parks: stop selling disposable bottles and let visitors refill reusable ones with public drinking water."

"Capitol Hill lawmakers from Louisiana have intervened on behalf of a New Orleans company that has failed to stop a decade-old oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico but lobbied for a refund of money reserved for spill containment work, according to letters obtained by The Associated Press through public records requests."

"Air pollution in the Twin Cities contributes to about 2,000 premature deaths every year, and sends 1,000 people to the hospital for asthma, lung and heart disease treatments."

"An Iowa utility will phase out coal at five plants in the state under a settlement announced Wednesday by the Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency."

"Assurances from Enbridge Energy that the company's twin oil pipelines under the Straits of Mackinac are in 'excellent' condition and pose 'minimal' risks of a spill are not enough to resolve existing public concerns about the line's potential threat to the Great Lakes and Michigan's economy."